Columbus school attendance scandal

Columbus City Schools employees -- and perhaps others in schools throughout the state -- are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards. Read the complete series.

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A proposal by a Columbus school-board member to break a 9.01-mill property-tax request into as
many as five operating levies and a bond issue has some wondering whether that is even possible
under Ohio law.

The surest way to make the ballot issues legal would be to use different types of levies, and
Ohio has plenty to go around, said Hollie Reedy, chief legal counsel for the Ohio School Boards
Association. Reedy counts more than two dozen types of levies that can go before voters. Among the
options: continuing levies, replacement levies, term-limited levies, renewal levies, emergency
levies and a range of income taxes.

“The district can choose which types of levies are most appropriate for their needs” and put a
mix of them on the same ballot, Reedy said.

Reedy is unaware of any prohibition on placing multiple permanent levies for operations on the
ballot, with each spelling out a different spending intention. “It might literally be possible,”
but any district wanting to do so should work closely with lawyers, she said.

Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman opposes any call to break up a November ballot issue so that
money for Columbus City Schools could be voted on separately from money for charter schools, his
spokesman said.

“The position is, this is one plan,” said Coleman spokesman Dan Williamson. “And it’s a
comprehensive plan that was put together by a very diverse group. It’s not two plans, or three
plans or four.”

The plan was never to offer “several solutions and ask people what they like best.”

A bill signed into law by Gov. John Kasich on Monday requires the Columbus school board to put a
shared charter-district levy on the November ballot. Coleman pushed for the law after his education
commission issued a series of recommendations this year, including sharing local tax dollars with
charters.

Only Cleveland has a similar tax-sharing plan in Ohio. In the rest of the state, charter schools
are funded only by per-pupil state aid, which follows students whether they attend public or
charter schools.

During public hearings on the Columbus levy, several people demanded separate district- and
charter-levy questions, saying they couldn’t vote to support charter schools. Officials responded
that the law doesn’t allow for that.

But at a meeting on Tuesday, Board of Education member Mike Wiles called on the district to
place as many as five operating levies on the November ballot, including one that would meet the
mandate of the state law by specifying a millage amount for charter schools. He suggested that the
millage amount could be 1/1,000th of a mill, or about $8,500 a year, to be split among partnering
charter schools.

Wiles’ proposal “doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of collaboration,” said Andrew Boy, the
director of Columbus Collegiate Academy, one of the high-performing charter schools held up by the
education commission as an example of the type of school likely to get local funding.

“There are certainly some people out there who don’t want this to happen,” Boy said.

Charter-school parents also vote, and “I think it’s to (district supporters’) benefit to have us
on there,” Boy said.

Bill Sims, the president of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said the district’s
biggest challenge in winning voter approval of a levy is the “negative effect” of its data scandal
and how the school board has handled it.

“If the levy issue goes south, it’s my sense that it will have less to do with the charter
schools and more with the level of trust that the city population has with the Columbus City
Schools,” Sims said.

The 9.01 mills a citizens committee has recommended that the district seek include 1 mill, or
about $8.5 million a year, for high-performing charter schools; 7 mills to operate the district,
upgrade technology and fund an independent auditor that also would need voter approval; and 1.01
mills to pay off bonds to build or renovate about 10 district schools.